Hardcore Is Booming, and Knocked Loose Is in the Blast Radius

Barricades are the enemy of hardcore fans, but given the music genre’s current commercial trajectory, it’s something that many of them will inevitably have to face.

In 2018, hardcore bands like Turnstile were traversing the club and DIY circuit. Today, they play Coachella and sell out multiple nights at theaters where Charlie Chaplin used to perform. Hardcore’s resonance with younger generations seems to have reached a potency not even witnessed during the days of Black Flag and Necros.

And it’s not because hardcore has changed. The music is still as loud and confrontational as it’s always been. The danger and transgression of the music and culture has also not gone away, even if you’re far less likely to get beaten by a vocalist and/or skinhead at a show now than in the 1980s.

Something about hardcore has captured the spirit of a considerable segment of today’s youth, and who better to ask about that than a member of one of the biggest acts manning that fort?

Louisville, Kentucky, is not exactly a place internationally known for its punk or metal scene like New York or the Bay Area. Nonetheless it's the place where one venue served as a launchpad and brought Knocked Loose to this new zenith: Spinelli’s Pizza.

“[Spinelli’s] was always down to have shows, and because it was a basement venue, it never got in trouble,” says Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale. “Some of the wildest shows that I’ve ever seen were in that venue.”

A divey pizzeria basement where having 50 occupants makes it feel like a sardine can under a hydraulic press is a far cry from the environments Knocked Loose’s continually growing following has taken them. They will play the 4,300-capacity The Factory in Deep Ellum on Sunday, May 5. Before that, they will play consecutive, sold-out shows at theaters and ballrooms in Nashville, Kansas City and Oklahoma City. Sold-out shows at Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Boise, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Boston will follow.

This and similar growth for other hardcore bands like DFW's own Kublai Khan TX (with whom Knocked Loose toured in 2022), it’s clearly an unprecedented time for the genre.

But why?

“It’s a very time-and-place thing of why it’s so huge, but it’s pretty much completely indebted to the internet [and] social media,” Hale says. “These hardcore shows and hardcore music are very much an assault on the senses. It’s very easy for someone in popular culture to share a clip of it and being like, ‘What the hell is going on here?!’ and have a lot of people just laugh at it. But at the same time, because it has that exposure, there’s always a certain percentage of people that hear it and are like, ‘Wait, that’s kind of awesome.’”

This judgmental gawking is not some mere hypothetical as far as Knocked Loose is concerned. Their 2023 set at Coachella was among the most talked-about moments of the festival that year, with the set drawing the attendance of influencers and even Billie Eilish. The perception from many an online no-name was that they were a square peg in the lineup, but it also drew some positive attention, Hale says.

“There’s a lot of people that saw Knocked Loose at Coachella that were probably in the crowd just because they heard that it would be crazy," the singer says.

Craziness, of course, is a core part of the band’s identity and live presence, just as it is with plenty of other hardcore bands. When you’re young, you want to tear shit up and take risks with the assurance that your bones are made of rubber, and hardcore is nothing if not an outlet for that urge. Knocked Loose has made a name channeling that practice at their live shows.

The other bands on this tour package have similarly been established in this respect and have put their own spin on hardcore’s trademark cacophony and transgression. Show Me the Body has something of a puree of the styles of Flipper, Throbbing Gristle, Big Black, Void and Amebix, an impressive feat considering how much a banjo factors into that sound. Loathe brings the sounds of Hum and Helmet to hardcore, while Australian band Speed hones in on the old-fashioned, New York-style hardcore.

“It’s just three bands that encapsulate different things that we love about the genre, and it’s three different lanes,” Hale says.

This lineup was the band’s initial conception of the tour and each band said yes promptly, something Hale says “almost never happens.”

He adds, “We could not be happier.”

This tour is in support of their upcoming record You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, which drops on May 10, five days after the Dallas show. Hale says that this record was an intricate balance between the band’s trademark aggression and new experimentation without depriving the music of its catchiness.

“Every other LP that we’ve written until was kind of written jam-style as a hardcore band,” he says. “This time around, it was a very intimidating record to write because we were like, ‘Man, we’re coming off of a concept EP [2021’s A Tear in the Fabric of Life] that we’re all super proud of, and we’re coming off of these two singles that were super concise and hit super hard. How can we keep up this level of creativity and expand what we’re doing and grow creatively and not have it seem old or boring, and also not take it too far?’”

One of the promotional singles from the new record is a joint with the delightfully artsy metal-pop stalwart single “Suffocate.” Fresh off the heels of the two acts debuting the song at Sick New World in Las Vegas on Saturday, Knocked Loose was announced as the main support for Slipknot’s 25-year anniversary tour on Tuesday.

This come-up for the band (and, in fact, for hardcore as a whole) speaks for itself. Hale, who is acting on that opportunity, says: “There’s a lot of opportunity for growth in the genre.”